News

The Green Paper focuses on the role of copyright in fostering dissemination of knowledge for research, science and education. More than 300 institutions and stakeholders have replied to the public consultation. ...

EuropeanaConnect and EuropeanaTravel are two in a series of projects funded by the European Commission's eContentplus programme, working towards the development of Europeana, the European digital library. ...

On Thursday 23 April 2009, the European Parliament has voted to extend the term of copyright for sound recordings across the European Union from 50 to 70 instead of 95 years, as originally proposed by the European Commission. ...

In a landmark case four men behind The Pirate Bay, a high-profile-file-sharing website based in Sweden, have been found guilty of breaking copyright law by the Stockholm district court. They were sentenced to one year in jail and ordered to pay 30 million Swedish Krona (€ 2,74 million) in damages to the record and film industry for helping internet users download protected music, movies and computer games. The website, which has an estimated 25 million active users, lists hundreds of thousands of “torrent” files, which link the user to content including Hollywood films, music tracks from international artists and software from leading companies held on the user's computers. ...

On 1st of April, the new IPRED (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive) law comes into force. Copyright owners will have the mandate to go to court and demand the names of a subscriber behind an IP address. The aim is to track down those which have downloaded copyrighted material without paying for it. ...

On 12 February 2009, the European Parliament Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) backed the Commission proposal from 16 July 2008 to extend the protection of the rights of performers and phonogram producers to from 50 to 95 years. The EP is also considering whether the music proposal should be extended to the audiovisual sector. ...

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